About Essbase in EPM Cloud

Essbase Version that Supports Hybrid Cubes

EPM Enterprise Cloud Service and EPM Standard Cloud Service subscriptions are deployed with an Oracle Essbase version that supports Hybrid Block Storage Option (BSO) cubes. Hybrid cubes may be used by Financial Consolidation and Close, Planning Application types such as Custom Planning, Strategic Workforce Planning and Sales Planning. If you create a FreeForm application by importing a snapshot from an Essbase deployment that does not support Hybrid cubes, the FreeForm application will then use non-hybrid BSO cube.

To make parent members of sparse and dense dimension dynamic, the Hybrid BSO cubes support some Aggregate Storage Option (ASO) capabilities in addition to BSO capabilities. For example, all cubes can have dynamic aggregations for calculations. Hybrid cubes provide many benefits including smaller database and application size, better cube refresh performance, faster import and export of data, improved performance of business rules, and faster daily maintenance of the business process. To ensure optimal performance, warnings and error messages are displayed during cube refresh if the business process does not conform to best practices for the following parameters:

• Block size
• Number of blocks
• Number of dense dimensions
• Maximum number of child members under any dynamic parent
• Maximum number of child members under any store parent
• Parents with one child member for level 1 and above of dimensions
• Level 1 and above not set to dynamic calculation and label only in dense dimensions
• Usage of dynamic cross-references

These parameters of enabled modules are enforced to ensure that best practices are followed:

• Number of new rules that can be added to a module
• Number of rules that can be modified
• Number of new forms added to a module
• Number of forms that can be modified

Essbase Version that Does not Support Hybrid Cubes

Legacy Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud subscriptions that were activated before the introduction of EPM Enterprise Cloud Service and EPM Standard Cloud Service are deployed with an Essbase version that does not support Hybrid cubes. These include the following legacy environments other than those already upgraded based on specific service requests:

Note:

Legacy deployments of these services may not support Hybrid cubes. You can, however, use a self-service process to upgrade Essbase to support Hybrid BSO cubes.

• Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud
• Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud
• Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service Plus One option license

  If you purchased EPM Cloud before June 4, 2019, you may have a license (Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service Plus One Business Process option) that allowed you to deploy Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud business processes (Financials, Strategic Modeling, Workforce, Projects, or Capital) in a Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service environment.

• Profitability and Cost Management Cloud
• Tax Reporting Cloud

Can I Upgrade to the Hybrid-enabled Essbase?

If your legacy subscription to the following is not deployed to use Hybrid-enabled Essbase, you can upgrade your Essbase deployment.

• Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud
• Oracle Financial Consolidation and Close Cloud
• Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service Plus One option license
• Profitability and Cost Management Cloud
• Tax Reporting Cloud

Upgrading the Essbase version is a self-service operation using the recreate EPM Automate command.

What are the Implications if I Upgrade to Hybrid-enabled Essbase?

You can upgrade to Hybrid-enabled Essbase for the following legacy environments :

• Profitability and Cost Management
• Planning
• Financial Consolidation and Close

  Hybrid-enabled Essbase is required only if you require the Extended Dimensionality option which supports more than two custom dimensions in your application.

• Tax Reporting

  Hybrid-enabled Essbase is recommended as the future-ready option

The following factors must be considered before upgrading to Hybrid-enabled Essbase:

• You must manually recreate the application or import an application snapshot after the environment is upgraded because the upgrade process deletes the existing application.
• Upgrading your environments to use Hybrid-enabled Essbase does not mean that your applications will automatically use Hybrid cubes.
• Snapshots of applications that use Hybrid-enabled Essbase, regardless of whether the application has been enabled to use Hybrid cubes, can be migrated only to other Hybrid-enabled Essbase environments.

Upgrading to Hybrid-Enabled Essbase for Your Environments

You should first enable Hybrid-Enabled Essbase in a test environment, validate that it works properly before attempting to convert your production environment. To upgrade to Hybrid-Enabled Essbase:

1. Using Migration, create a full backup snapshot of the application in the Test environment. If you did not modify data and artifacts after the last maintenance of the environment, you can use Artifact Snapshot as a full backup of the environment.

   Download the backup to a local computer as a precautionary measure.

2. Using EPM Automate, upgrade your environment to use Hybrid-enabled Essbase.

   See "EPM Automate Commands" in Working with EPM Automate for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud.

   • Start an EPM Automate session and log into an environment:

     epmautomate login serviceAdmin Example_pwd https://testexample.oraclecloud.com

   • Execute the recreate command setting the value of the optional EssbaseChange parameter to Upgrade.

     epmautomate recreate -f EssbaseChange=Upgrade

3. Optional: Generally, the backup snapshot you created in Step 1 is available in the environment. If it is not present, using the uploadFile EPM Automate command or Migration, upload the backup snapshot (see Step 1) to the environment.

4. Create the application by importing the snapshot.

   See Importing Artifacts and Application from a Snapshot in Administering Migration for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management Cloud for detailed instructions.
5. Enable Hybrid in your environments
   1. Financial Consolidation and Close
      1. See Converting Period and Movement Dimensions to Dense Dimensions in Administering Financial Consolidation and Close.
      2. Enable Extended Dimensionality option.
   2. Planning

      See Enabling Hybrid-Enabled Essbase for Your Planning Environments

Enabling Hybrid-Enabled Essbase for Your Planning Environments

If you have a legacy Oracle Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud subscription or a Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service Plus One option license, you can convert your Planning application to use Hybrid BSO cubes.

1. Convert the Planning application in your test environment to a Planning Modules application.

   See "Converting a Standard or Reporting Application to an Enterprise Application" in Administering Planning Modules.

2. Refresh the database. Ensure that the process runs successfully without errors. See Creating and Refreshing Application Databases in Administering Planning.
3. Upgrade to Hybrid-enabled Essbase. See Upgrading to Hybrid-Enabled Essbase for Your Environments.

   Planning applications that use Hybrid-enabled Essbase do not permit incremental data loading using Migration. As a result, you cannot use the daily maintenance snapshot for incremental import of data; you must import the full snapshot to load data.

4. Enable Hybrid.
   1. From the Home page, select Application and then Overview.
   2. From Actions, select Enable Hybrid Mode.

      EPM Cloud validates your application to ensure that it meets the requirements for applications that use Hybrid cubes. These best practices are listed at the beginning of this section.

   3. Modify your application based on the validation errors and warnings. Errors must be resolved before a successful database refresh can occur. On encountering an error, the database refresh process stops and places the application into maintenance mode. Warnings must be reviewed to identify and correct potential issues.
   4. Optional: Redesign and streamline your application to make best use of Hybrid BSO capabilities. Steps to streamline your application include making parent members in some sparse dimensions dynamic and removing intermediate rollups from rules, where appropriate. Additionally, you may need to modify the existing member formula syntax to work as expected with Hybrid-Enabled Essbase. Test the application to determine the right combination of sparse dimensions with dynamic parent members that work for your specific application.
5. Test your application to verify that it works as designed.
6. Repeat the preceding steps to convert the application in the Production environment.

How Do I Know if an Application has Hybrid BSO Cubes Enabled?

The Overview tab of your application indicates whether it is set up to use Hybrid cubes. You can open this tab from the Home page by selecting Application and then Overview.

As a general guideline, Financial Consolidation and Close, Custom Planning, Planning Modules, and FreeForm applications that you create in EPM Enterprise Cloud Service use Hybrid BSO cubes. Additionally, Financial Consolidation and Close and Planning Modules applications you create in EPM Standard Cloud Service, by default, use Hybrid BSO cubes. Some cubes in these applications may still use ASO cubes, as necessary or as delivered content by Oracle.